Before Summer Ends
by Ihsan997
Summary: It is hard to find peace and quiet with the life of an adventurer. For an interracial, interfactional couple, it's even harder. Set six months after Four Nights in Gorgrond. Threeshot.
1. Convergence

**A/N: Hello, and welcome to the sequel to Four Nights in Gorgrond! This takes place six months after the end of that story. Expect a few cameos and tie-ins to my other stories (except for Vegnus - unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a scene to include him in here without it seeming forced. Next time, buddy!).**

 **The story contains both graphic violence and mushy couple fluff in all three chapters. Consider yourselves warned on both counts.**

 _Mid-summer, year 31._

The stars tinkled brightly on a cloudless night over Talador that summer, casting their light down through the branches of the lightly swaying trees. The breeze was light and cool, and from a distance the dark green grass ruffled like waves in the ocean as the air flowed over it. Trees dotted the hilly landscape, not quite as thickly as in northern Kalimdor back on Azeroth but just enough for the canopy to blanket most of the natural green carpet, turning it an even darker hue.

Through the darkness of the west-central woodlands of the region, a red light shimmered between the trees. Bounding up and down steadily, the light weaved in and out of the trees, stopping every so often as it hovered in one spot before continuing on its way. In the night, the tree trunks were illuminated slightly as they took on a shade of crimson in addition to the dark brown of the bark, and the shrubs and roots on the forest floor came into clear view.

The further the red light approached, the wider it became until it was apparent that what had seemed like a single light shining was actually two. The high bridge of an aquiline nose came into view in between the two lights as the face scanned the area, still searching for something.

Then, off in the distance through the wood, two faint silver orbs answered the silent call of the red. They both paused, gazing at each other for a moment before the red weaved around another tree trunk, stopping every few seconds to wait for the silver. The silver followed suit, bouncing slightly as the bearer hopped on her toes to avoid the tall, jutting cypress-like knees found in the Talador woodlands.

Pausing again, the silver gripped one of the tree trunks and suddenly dropped out of view. The red stood and watched in anticipation of what she was doing, unsure of what would come next. Quickly, the silver came into view again, darting out from behind the tree as she peered at him. A shy smile spread underneath the dim light of the red as the dim light of the silver fluttered twice, her eyes opening and closing in an exaggerated way before disappearing behind the tree again.

Following her lead, the red gripped one of the tree trunks and tried in vain to hide himself behind it, though his broader shoulders were impossible to conceal behind the oaks and cypresses of Talador. Waiting for what he felt was the right moment, the red finally whipped out from behind the trunk, only to flinch back as he realized that the silver had closed the distance and was now only three feet in front of him.

The night elf giggled in a youthful way that belied her twelve millennia of life experience, amused that she could startle the jungle troll like that. They both moved forward into an embrace, though she struggled to wrap her arms around his torso with the bulk of the large travel bag strapped to his back. She shuddered as he breathed in the scent of sandalwood on her scalp, memories of their first night in Gorgrond sweeping over them both.

"I missed ya," he whispered in Darnassian with that low, baritone voice as she could feel the rumble in his lungs press against her own chest.

With her head tucked underneath his chin, she spoke off to the side, their long, sensitive ears able to pick up the quiet sound of their voices. "Me too," she answered with that husky, breathy way of speaking that always warmed his heart. "It's only been seventeen days this time…are we too sappy?"

"Nah, girl," he replied with a grin. She was literally five-hundred times his age, but despite her initial protests the way he would refer to her had begun to feel more endearing."Ain't nobody around ta see. Whatever we feel like doin' or sayin' is just tha right amount of mushiness for us."

* * *

An opaque, beige canvas tent had been set up on the banks of a small stream winding away from Exarch's Refuge on an alternate version of Draenor, the trees lining each side providing some measure or privacy despite the close proximity to the large neutral city. A considerable number of travelers native to Draenor and adventurers from Azeroth passed in the woodlands nearby, though the trickle of the stream and the natural sound barrier formed by the trees provided a measure of intimacy that raised Khujand and Cecilia's comfort level enough to almost feel like a normal couple.

The grass ended shortly before the edge of the shallow stream, and a fine, smooth sand with a stone greyish color provided a soft spot for the two to lay on. They were both still soaked and stripped down to their underwear after having tried their best to paddle around in the water. The stream was about four feet deep and lined with smooth, circular rocks on the bottom, allowing them to dip their heads down but not to swim.

Not that it mattered. They were together again, after having had another nearly three-week gap between visits. If wetting their hair and lightly splashing each other was all they could do given the shallow depth of the stream, then that was enough.  
Khujand sat in the sloping, sandy shore with his feet planet down and his knees raised, resting his elbows on top of them. Cecilia was so preoccupied with a pebble she had stepped on when exiting the stream that she hadn't noticed him ogling her. Slowly, they were both learning to function as a couple, though it wasn't easy for either of them. His entire love life across his twenty-seven years consisted only of two loveless marriages and two empty, unfulfilling one night stands; she had spent the millennia of the Long Vigil surrounded only by other women and then moved on to a few hazy years at Booty Bay where she hadn't been sober enough to remember any of her exes by now. They loved each other very much – she said it without hesitation after their first month – but they were also inexperienced, especially with appropriate public behavior. That their respective races belonged to opposite factions didn't help to ease their social anxiety, either. Spending time together in private was always easier.

Finally looking up to see Khujand staring at her, Cecilia tried to whip her wet hair back behind her head sultrily, reveling in the awe she was inspiring him with. Unfortunately for her, she didn't tilt her head far enough to the side and her long, nearly waist-length hair just slapped against her arm.

"Wait, do over, do over," she giggled as she tried in vain to sound serious.

She bowed her head down far too low for it to be sultry anymore, though he was loving it all the same. "Ya gotta tilt ya head more ta tha left," he chuckled.

Since she was already leaning to the right, tilting her head to the left just caused part of her hair to wave around in a circular motion against her stomach and the other part to fall over her face.

"You said left!" She didn't even bother pulling her hair away from her face, though he could see the goofy grin on her face behind the wet strands.

"Sorry, I meant my left. Ta ya right," he answered with a fake-serious voice and dramatic hand motion.

Arching her head and upper body straight back, Cecilia held still for a moment while Khujand raked her body with his bewildered, widening eyes. He was entirely unprepared when she crunched her abs, strutted forward and knelt down, slapping him in the face with her long, wet hair.

"Hey!" he laughed as he grabbed her fake-resisting arms and pulled her into his lap. She spun around with her back to him, sitting between his legs as she pushed his hands aside and rested her own elbows on top of his knees.

With his chin resting on top of her head, they were both able to enjoy both the peaceful experience of the rushing stream and each other. The weather wasn't cold or even chilly, though he could feel her huddling between his body and limbs. Elven bodies weren't as hot as trollish bodies, and despite the fact that Cecilia definitely wasn't the touchy-feely type, she had a tendency to cling to, wrap herself around or otherwise hold on closely to him whenever they were alone.

"Ya tha most childish twelve-thousand-year-old I know," he whispered into her still-wet hair.

"I'm still the only twelve-thousand-year-old you know, at least until we find a way for you to safely meet my family," she whispered up to him as she leaned her head back against his shoulder. "And remember: emotionally, I'm only as old as when the Long Vigil ended."

At that comment, he chuckled a bit, struck once more at the vast disparity in their life experience. She reached a hand back to tug on one of the four-inch, sawed-off knubs that were once his long tusks. "Don't make me feel like we're so different," she said in a lecturing tone, only halfway fake this time.

"Never," he crooned to her quietly. "No matter what anybody says. I share more with ya than with any of my own people."

Cecilia reached her other hand back and scratched his scalp near the base of his vibrant scarlet mane as they sat in silence for a few more minutes. They both tried to control their breathing, the heaving of their bodies against each other putting them both at risk of dashing back into the privacy of their tent again before either of them had properly rested. Khujand fidgeted as he sat, and she could already tell he was considering opening up a relatively heavy topic. She could read his eyes, his face, his movements and even the rumble of his lungs so well.

"Tell me what you're thinking," she asked as she slid her hand down to his face, giving his short beard a tug.

He hesitated for a moment as he looked for the words to use about a topic that caused him some nervousness despite her very relaxed attitude toward it. "Are ya sure that ya don't want a weddin' or nothin'?"

"Mostly sure," she said confidently as she rested her hand on the back of his neck. "We used to do weddings before the Sundering, but that was ten thousand years ago. It's very rare now, and we've forgotten the significance of a lot of the rituals." She peered up at him again with a sly smile on her face. "But I'm still happy that you asked for marriage before I did. I'm a hundred percent sure that I want that."

Khujand's shoulders loosened. Cecilia had told him this so many times, but in private, they were both each other's confidants and armchair therapists; they could air their insecurities without fear. That she never tired of making plans for the future or sharing her stories of the past – about her people, about the world, about the millennia of history she had witnessed – was one of the things he loved about her the most.

"Everybody I ask says night elves don't do tha whole marriage thing," he pondered out loud as he massaged her arms.

"That's not really true or false," she explained, falling into story mode without even realizing it.

"The number of men dropped below the number of women during the War of the Ancients as they were still the warriors back then. After that, eight or nine out of ten night elf men were in the Emerald Dream, and most of those who weren't druids instead devoted themselves guarding the barrow dens while the other ninety or so percent slept.

"The druids woke up only three times during the whole Dream: for the Satyr War, for the exile of the highborne and the War of the Shifting Sands. People who were married before the Sundering reunited those three times and three separate generations of children were born. Otherwise, not much else went on. Kaldorei have no problem with monogamy – I don't know where this stereotype stating otherwise came from, I mean, freaking half the world went to Tyrande's wedding – but since we weren't fertile during immortality, most of us weren't interested in relationships. They didn't serve a purpose. Hey, what are - ack!"

Khujand hugged Cecilia tighter without even realizing it, causing her to croak playfully. It was fortunate for them both that, as much as she enjoyed philosophizing about the world, he enjoyed listening, never seeming to have enough of the tales she had to tell.

"Sorry," he chuckled softly. "I love it when ya tell me this stuff."

She laughed along with him, leaning further back into his intense body heat as she continued.

"Point is, to say night elves do or do not get married is difficult. We didn't have any men around for literally thousands and thousands of years save the very few den guards, and since we were a completely martial society with different assigned roles, we never really got to see those men. Not even my dad, who was one of them; my mom would always complain that he didn't visit enough. But you know, since immortality ended about ten years ago, the Temples of Elune have held a handful of weddings. I hear that my sister has helped officiate some. And marriage is back, along with reproduction."

In a flash, Khujand was already squeezing her again and dug his chin into her shoulder to tickle her. She resisted playfully but there was no point in trying to escape his grasp, whether she wore the pants in their new family or not.

"So - ack! - now that immortality is finished - hrrngh! - there's nothing I want more than - blarg - than to raise an army of trollbebehs!" They both shared the same giddy look before bursting out into laughter.

"Speakin' of which," he chuckled as he released his affectionate bear hug, "ya never showed me tha list of baby names ya wanna use when it's time."

He saw a flash of remembrance on her face as she grinned again and turned to face him. "Oh, yeah! I brought mine with me. It's back in the…tent." Her voice trailed off as they both turned to look at the open flap and then back to each other.  
"Do ya…need any help retrievin' it?" he asked with a sly grin.

She raised a hand to her face coyly, considering the notion for a moment. "Will we still have energy left for the hike back to Exarch's Refuge if you do?"

He ran his fingers through her gradually drying hair and cupped the back of her head. "Probably not. But tha red elves and tha space goa…I mean, draenei have secured much of tha surroundin' area from tha demons. Shouldn't be hard ta rent a room with beds long enough for us once we get there."

Blushing slightly despite her fatigue, Cecilia rose and brushed the sand off of her backside, letting out a yelp when she felt Khujand 'assisting' her.

"Hey!" she shouted half-surprised and half-playful. "What happened to renting a room?"

"Right, right," he chuckled shyly. "Listen, I forgot ta bring a towel this time. Why don't ya dry off ya hair for now, I'm gonna go pick us some of those fruits we saw around tha bend. I can worry about my mane when I get back."

"Please, that would be lovely!"

Closing the tent flap slightly, Cecilia began fiddling through her much lighter travel bag – she had already been stationed at Fort Wrynn and most of her heavier items were stored with Irien and Anushka at the post office their employers had established at the secured portion of the Refuge.

Slipping on dry underwear and a baggy pair of light brown Darkspear-style pants, Khujand wandered barefoot along the stream as he sought out the trees they had spied earlier with the oblong, surprisingly tasty pink fruit. They seemed to sprout from the thick bark of the branches in the canopy, and were just low enough that he could pick them without needing to climb.

As he strode through the forest, he couldn't help but marvel at their situation. It felt almost arrogant to do so, to even think it in his own head, but given his hopelessness just six months ago, it was hard to resist.

 _Half a year,_ his inner voice, the occasionally out of control critic and confidante, whispered to him. _You didn't think the two of you would make it this far, but you were wrong._

In two days, it would be their six month anniversary. It was hard to resist mulling it over in his head, but still hard to imagine as well. Six months ago, their paths had crossed again in Gorgrond; she was on a work assignment protecting her employer's cartographers, and he just happened to be stranded without a mount or food while on a low-paying quest. Eight years before that, his sole act of kindness while working as a jailer and torturer at the Mor'shan Ramparts – helping Cecilia escape the makeshift jail – had seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime tryst they would never have been able to pursue.

So many times in the past six months she had worked to convince him that logically, statistically, it was possible. They were both adventurers, and as far apart as their paths had diverged during the interim, most adventurers with any amount of gumption would also be supporting the campaign against the Iron Horde on Draenor, whether through protecting logistical service workers like her or joining raids against Iron Horde depots and outposts like him. Their meeting was entirely possible and even probable, and she likely wouldn't be the last one of either his former captives, or his former cellmates from his own prison sentence, that he would bump in to. Still, despite her explanations and their shared belief in fate, it felt like a dream sometimes – to not only be together but to function so well as a couple. His participation in the joint Alliance-Horde assault on the Blackrock Foundry a few weeks prior suddenly seemed less exciting and more foolish as he realized there was someone waiting for him to come back, now.

 _You angered her more than you would like to admit_ , the inner monologue chastised. Finally admitting it to himself, he shook his head silently as he walked and stared at the grass instead of the branches where the fruit was supposed to be.

That was a big sticking point in the relationship, actually, and so far their only serious source of tension. As much as he tried to convince her that his participation would earn them more money through the spoils of war to finish paying off their house back on Azeroth, and as much as she understood the argument rationally, it was difficult for her heart to accept. She had lived her entire twelve-thousand years of existence as a bachelorette save a handful of courtships with boring suitors before the War of the Ancients (she couldn't even remember them) and a few years of bad relationships and substance abuse in Booty Bay. Now that more and more night elves from her generation were dying of old age, her biological clock was ringing a loud alarm, and she made no secret of the fact that to even think of losing him was the only thing in the world that still scared her wise, ancient self.

He felt guilty to put her through that and was no less torn over the possibility not spending the rest of his days with her, but the sooner they could earn enough money, the sooner they could be done, finished, completely and irreversibly retired from adventuring, questing and war altogether. She and Irien had put a downpayment on their property in Ratchet – a neutral territory where an interracial, interfactional couple like Cecilia and Khujand would be relatively free to live their lives and even raise children. Sure, the neutral port cities run by the cartels were a bit seedy, but other mixed couples like Sonja and Erikur had made it work, and Ratchet certainly wasn't as bad as Booty Bay; Cecilia could tell him that from experience.

But that all cost money, especially given all the business ideas they and Irien were brainstorming. Every raid he joined would be his last, he repeated to himself every time.

"And here we are…" he thought out loud as he realized he had already walked past about a dozen pieces of the pink, hanging fruit.

The branches of the scattered trees arched overhead, allowing a bit of starlight to shine through. He was slightly distracted as he reached absentmindedly to pick some of the fruit, wondering what it would be like to stargaze once they returned home to Kalimdor. Oh, what a sappy fool he had turned-

"Raaa!" growled a low voice from behind him as he felt a weight heavier than Cecilia's but less than his own latch on to his back.

A furred hand that was such a dark shade of brown it was almost black gripped his left shoulder as he felt the sting of claws digging into his flesh. The soles of two padded feet planted firmly on the sides of Khujand's heels as an impressive sword was brought down in front of his face. The snarl was the unmistakable sound of a worgen, one of the wolf people the Alliance had recruited, and he could tell that like himself, his attacker was big for his people, almost the size of Khujand himself.

"Back away slowly, Horde scum!" the man barked at Khujand in Common while clinging to his unshaken upper body. The claws sank just a bit deeper into his shoulder and broke the skin as the sword's blade remained steady about three inches in front of his face.

"Kinda hard ta back away when ya hangin' onta me like a spider monkey," Khujand grumbled with no hint of fear or intimidation in his voice, though his patience was wearing thin only a few seconds into the exchange.

"Well…uh…walk away from the trees!" The worgen held tightly onto Khujand's back, seemingly shocked that trolls, being just as uncouth and brutish as the wolf people, wouldn't be frightened by them.

"There are trees in every direction, ya dumbass," the Darkspear answered, his lack of fear or even respect shining through in his voice.

There was a pause as the worgen seemed to mull over his poorly thought out plan. Though he wielded the sword properly and sounded like he was wearing the plate armor of a proper warrior, he obviously wasn't a master strategist.

"Hey! Listen! I have the advantage here, I'm giving the ord – graaah!"

Before the man could even finish his sentence, Khujand had looped his right forearm around the crook of the elbow of the worgen's sword arm, then reached behind his own back with his other hand to grab the worgen's left ankle. Sharp claws scratched across Khujand's shoulder, drawing four lines of blood as the worgen foolishly held on to an anchor that was useless from a tactical standpoint. The sword banged the jungle troll's cheek but without enough force to open a wound, and the grip on the worgen's opposite hand and ankle allowed Khujand to easily flip him sideways.

"Whoa! Wait-"

Giving up his own footing, Khujand jolted them both straight back to the ground and slammed all his weight onto the worgen's body as they grappled, releasing the wolf man's ankle but holding onto his sword arm and splaying his own legs across the grass. He twisted around to smother the squirming wolf man beneath him, working to cramp the man's leverage space as much as possible.

"Drop tha sword! Drop it!" Khujand ordered, grabbing the worgen's wrist with his free hand and applying pressure onto the veins just at the meeting point of the man's hand and forearm. The worgen panicked and let go of the sword, and Khujand knew that for all his combat experience the wolf man didn't know how to wrestle.

"Sword stealer! You thieving scum!" the worgen shouted gruffly as he kicked the soil with his feet, his legs flailing when they should have splayed and helped to support his weight while on the ground. He tried pushing Khujand's arms away and rolling to his side, a big mistake.

Khujand was lying perpendicularly over the worgen's chest, and drove his own toes into the ground to push all of his weight onto the armored wolf man's body. Noticing a gap in the man's armor just over his midsection, Khujand transitioned by swinging his knee up onto the man's torso and pressed all of his 500 pounds downward while holding his palms on the ground for balance.

"Aargh!" the worgen gasped, ineffectively swiping at Khujand's clipped tusks. He dug his claws into the troll's upper arms and took a threatening snap with his jaws.  
Khujand no longer held any factional animosity – except toward Varian Wrynn as a person, not that he'd ever have a chance to skewer the hypocritical king – but the sting of the worgen's claws was testing him.

"Ya wanna bite, huh?" he asked angrily as he raised up and jammed both of his hands down into the worgen's mouth. "Let's see if ya change ya mind!"

With the jungle troll's massive mits wedged between his jaws, the worgen couldn't muster enough pressure to chomp down with his sharp teeth, and Khujand gripped both its upper and lower jaw with each hand and started to pull.

"Hhrrnng!" The worgen grabbed Khujand's forearms and continued kicking at the grass with his feet, not knowing how to escape from the bottom of a mounted position.

"STOP! PLEASE! WE HAVE MONEY!" the voice of a female worgen cried.

Khujand looked up and saw a wolf woman with jet black fur run toward them and fall to her knees about two yards away struggling to pull something from the pockets of her snow white wool jacket. Both the navy blue Sunday dress she wore and her brash approach to two grappling warriors without being armed herself insinuated that she was a civilian; he was able to spy the ring on her finger as he continued to pin who he assumed to be her husband beneath him before speaking.

"He attacked me!" Khujand growled. He felt guilty for speaking so harshly to the obviously distraught woman when he already had her husband beaten anyway, but the clawmarks on his shoulder and forearms had caused more anger than actual pain.

"He was only trying to protect me!" she pleaded as she pulled a coinpurse out of her jacket pocket and tossed it to Khujand, accidentally hitting him in the eye. "Let him go, please!"

Quickly releasing his grip on the man's upper and lower jaws, Khujand slammed the worgen's snout shut and held it closed at the tip, a trick his father had taught him when handling unruly raptors. The man stopped struggling as much despite the asphyxiation from 500 pounds of troll driving down onto his chest, seemingly embarrassed at having to be saved by his noncombatant wife. Khujand tossed the coinpurse back at her with his free hand.

"Protect ya from what? From me throwin' fruit at ya-"

"Oh, Sentinel! Sentinel! Help, we're being attacked by Horde!"

He grumbled and turned to Cecilia while retaining his grip on the worgen's snout. She was wearing plaid drawstring pants and a mahogany-colored, loose-fitting short-sleeved smock along with…her Third War-era huntress helmet, only one bracer and her moon glaive attached to it. She was also barefoot. Despite the bleeding cut on his shoulder and rather dishonest explanation by the wolf woman, he couldn't help but smile at the sight of his fiancé looking like she had come to fight in her pajamas.

Cecilia fell into Sentinel mode rather quickly. "Khujand, come stand behind me," she said politely but firmly. He understood the need to appear fair given the tense situation, and did as he was told. She turned back to the wolf woman, who dashed to her husband's side and helped him sit up.

"Why were they fighting?" Cecilia then asked with the typical cold, unemotional manner the enforcers of the night elves used.

"We were trying to find our way to Exarch's Refuge for the festivities in a few days," the wife sputtered like a tattletale, appearing perturbed by the fact that the Kaldorei treated the Darkspear in such a casual, familiar way. "We saw the troll through the trees and I was afraid it wanted to eat me, so my husband had to save us!"

Khujand sensed the quaking thing Cecilia's shoulder blades would do when she was trying not to laugh out loud; he also found it strange that the wolf people would be accusing anyone else of attempted cannibalism, given their carnivorous diets.

"Alright, ma'am, listen," Cecilia started with her armchair therapist voice. "I understand that you felt threatened, and I'm very sorry for what has happened. However, the man whom you saw through the trees is my fiancé and I can assure you that he has no desire to fight or cannibalize members of the Alliance."

Both of the worgen and even Khujand himself grew a little wide eyed at Cecilia's comment. Although the local community at Highpass had accepted him sleeping within the settlement walls (though not within the town proper) when he came to visit Cecilia and the couple had become comfortable enough both at Beastwatch and neutral zones to walk, sit or stand next to each other, her confession to two obviously proud members of the Alliance seemed very forward. She, on the other hand, appeared totally unfazed and unperturbed by the reactions of the two wolf people. Khujand couldn't help but feel a bit guilty at his own lack of openness about a love that wasn't anyone else's right to judge.

"You're…oh…" the wolf woman said with a perplexed expression as her voice trailed off. She turned to her downcast husband and then back to the pajama-clad, purple-skinned elf in front of them. "We didn't…um…we thought…I'm Elizra. My husband Tyron was only defending me while…"

Still crestfallen, the wolf warrior named Tyron looked up as he caught his breath. "We were assisting with the rebuilding efforts at Tuurem," he grumbled in that rough voice common to their people, though he sounded more haggard than angry. "We heard that the war effort was succeeding at Auchindoun and thought we'd be of more use there, but we were attacked by bandits from Azeroth on the road here. I slayed three of them and drove off the others, but our talbuk…it didn't make it."

Cecilia knelt down to hover close to the same level as the two worgen. "Bandits from Azeroth?" she asked while looking to Khujand and then back to the married couple. "They came all the way through the Dark Portal to steal?"

Elizra shook her head in dismay. "They were all green-skinned orcs except some bald human man, and we recognized their clothing as being from back home. There was also a wiry pandaren with them who was speaking Orcish, they had to have been from Azeroth."

"Elizra here is a medic," Tyron said as he tapped his wife on the shoulder, sharing a mushy look that reminded Khujand of how he and Cecilia had looked at each other earlier but confused him when it was shared by wolf people. "She can heal and knows first aid. We had supplies so she could help at the infirmary tent at Exarch's Refuge, but the bag was knocked into a river when the bandits who had escaped ran away with some of our stuff."

Cecilia stood back up and shook her head in sympathy. Tyron stood up as well as Elizra helped him dust off his armor.

"We were just about to hike there now," Cecilia explained with an inviting tone as she took Khujand by the arm and tried to pull him around to face the two worgen. "We're very sorry for how this first impression turned out, but we're also thrilled to find others willing to contribute to the campaign any way they can and would be glad to show you the way to the Refuge. Right, dear?"

It took Khujand a few seconds to notice his fiancé looking at him expectantly. He crooked his head and saw that Tyron appear both embarrassed and apologetic at the same time. Normally Khujand would have had an easier time forgiving due to his own sensitivity toward social gaffes, but the scratches on his shoulder and forearms were still irritating him.

"Yeah, whatever," he muttered with a sneer, staring at nothing. He winced as he realized that he was being disrespectful to the love of his life and not just the two worgen.

Suddenly feeling like a complete and total asshole, Khujand avoided whatever look Cecilia was shooting him and quickly turned away when he saw Tyron look down in shame, Elizra's wolfish face looking puppy-like as she was wounded by disrespect to a husband who obviously did his best to take care of her.

"I mean...uh...I'm sorry too. And, eh...we would...be very happy ta help ya join tha war effort around Auchindoun." Though he would accept an apology from Tyron for starting the fight based mostly on racial stereotyping, Khujand understood when the worgen only nodded, his pride too damaged for him to say sorry out loud.

* * *

Khujand and Tyron stood on the outside of the four-person phalanx, sharing the load of Cecilia's camping gear as she and Elizra walked next to each other in the middle. Perhaps only half a mile down the road they could see the new gates of the quickly expanding Exarch's Refuge, makeshift buildings quickly popping up thanks to goblin contractors from Azeroth like Cecilia's employer seeing the opportunity to make money while helping out with the campaign against the Iron Horde.

Cecilia had flexed her counseling skills well, keeping Elizra talking and even laughing during the hike back to the settlement, even pulling in a slowly lightening-up Tyron and a still sheepish Khujand into the mockery of the Iron Horde's shoddy smithing and the Shadow Council's gradual internal crumbling.

"We're just about there," Elizra beamed as they neared the Refuge. "It will be nice to rest for a bit before looking for work, and we're looking forward to the celebration of pushing the demons back that we heard about."

Several local draenei children shot past them while chasing a ball down the road, a reminder that even during war, every day life had to continue. The parents hurried after them, a reminder that even during every day life, there was still tension in the air.

Anushka, the draenei cartographer's assistant Cecilia worked with for the private postal service in Gorgrond and Talador, just happened to be disposing of some paper waste by the gate. Her light brown work uniform - she seemed to have an endless supply, every jumpsuit exactly the same - was freshly cleaned and she took care to avoid the refuse piles the refugee children had a tendency to carelessly create. Brushed back short hair that matched the color of her uniform, her brightly glowing eyes beamed as she spied the group.

"OhbytheLightCici!" sputtered the manic, hooved technical worker as she happily pranced over to them. "I not seeings you for one week, I has a sad!"

"Hey! Oh, Elizra, this is Anushka, you're going to like her," Cecilia said as she broke the general elven rule about excessive touching in public and allowed her horned friend to give her a warm hug.

Cecilia noticed that Khujand had stood back a bit, likely thinking he could extend his hand to shake first in order to avoid the impending uncomfortable hug and the obligatory jealous frown Cecilia never was able to supress. Anushka foiled the plan as always, her eyes even awkwardly darting down to the big troll's waist before shooting back up; both her hug and her release of the hug were so fast that it added to the awkwardness.

After a few minutes of introductions and chatting about the children's song and dance that happened to be planned on the same day as their six-month anniversary, Cecilia shot Khujand a rather frank look, trying to silently prod him to make peace with who seemed like decent people despite the bad initial impression.

"Listen, Tyron," her fiance started contritely. "We're, uh...very happy ta meet others that want ta help wherever they can. We'd be honored if ya let us buy ya a late dinner after tha sun goes down."

The worgen's eyes lit up as he seemed sincerely touched by the peace offering. "Oh, we'd be honored too! I'm...well, you're not like all the other Horde I've met. I'm sorry about earlier."

That Tyron apologized with so much less hesitation than Khujand seemed to make the jungle troll feel even worse for his previous immaturity, which Cecilia found comforting in a way. As difficult as it was to see him sending himself into a guilt trip yet again, she knew it would be better for the recovery of his social skills after years in prison. Cecilia explained the location of the food stalls serving local Draenor cuisine in Common while Khujand slipped Anushka a few coins and explained the worgen couple's situation and lack of funds in Orcish, requesting that they not be allowed to pay for their room in the local inn.

After saying their goodbyes for the time being, Anushka led Elizra and Tyron away, leaving Cecilia and Khujand by the gate. As they turned to each other, she pursed her lips and gazed at him with an expression she knew he'd read not so much as irritation as bemused dismay.

"I wasn't bein' understandin', I know," he admitted while rubbing the back of his head.

Cecilia touched his arm, giving his bicep a squeeze. "Well, that, and the fact that I noticed your shock when I admitted to them that we're engaged," she whispered with disappointment. "I know Thunder Pass has a different environment, but we're in neutral territory now. Nobody can pass judgment on us here."

Khujand sighed heavily, and he appeared to know that she was right. "I'm gettin' used ta it, yeah? It just takes time. Ya been mixin' with both factions longer than me, what with tha jobs on tha goblin ships and all." He gripped her elbow and tickled it slightly as he examined the crystal blue irises ringing her silver pupils. "This anniversary will be good. I promise I'll improve on that point."

They lingered with those mushy smiles for a moment longer before Cecilia picked up the bag Tyron had been carrying and pretended she would carry it herself before slipping it over Khujand's shoulder with a cheeky grin.

As they walked into Exarch's Refuge intent on a few days of relaxation and browsing the local bazaar, they focused their attention completely on the town. Hidden behind the trees, an abnormally lean pandaren, a greasy human with a bad combover and a one-eared orc wearing a stupid looking headband watched the happy couple's every move silently.


	2. One More Try

**A/N: Don't own Warcraft or Blook. Fluffy tiff + violent throwback and coarse language. That's all the warning you get.**

Although there was an enormous central platform carved from stone that formed the main square of Exarch's Refuge, much of the burgeoning town was comprised of the more recent buildings erected in light of the war effort. With the reconstruction in places like Tuurem already under way, the gradually turning tide in favor of the forces of good at Auchindoun attracted a large number of both Azerothian adventurers and even natives of this alternate version of Draenor.

More soldiers and adventurers meant, of course, more demand for services: waystations, inns, bed and breakfast joints, regular restaurants and food and drink vendors, war mills, weapon and armor smiths, clothiers, general provisioners, stables, and every craft and trade from shoe repair to barbershops.

Although a good number of the entrepreneurs were goblins - and to a lesser extent, gnomes and dwarves - from Azeroth bidding on contracts from the Alliance, Horde or Steamwheedle governments, the races native to Draenor had proven their business skills as well. The entire Refuge was lined with hawkers, merchants and service workers from the draenei, the orcs, the arakkoa, a few saberon and an ogron construction worker. It was a multiracial, multicultural mileu that could even challenge the neutral cartel cities on Azeroth or Shattrath on Outland, the version of Draenor correlating with the Azerothians' version of-

"Alright wait, that's just a bit much while we tryin' ta take everything in."

Cecilia smirked at Khujand, her own head spinning from her description as well. "I'll leave the alternate dimension stuff out while we play the narrating game."

It was a multiracial, multicultural mileu that could even challenge non-factional cities. Some of the shops were simple tents - gossamer silk for the draenei, carelessly yet still adequately woven cloth for the arakkoa, skillfully tanned leather for the orcs and simple animal hide for the cat-like saberons who seemed almost instinctively antagonistic toward worgen yet oddly warm toward trolls, with whom they seemed to share a surprisingly high number of cultural similarities.

Still, much of the 'settlement' proper was now composed of wooden structures built from locally harvested wood. While blood elves did their best to leave their aesthetic mark on the architecture of the new buildings, the presence of stained glass and emphasis on varying shades of blue and purple signified the dominant influence of draenic design.

Through the motley crowd of workers, travelers, simple customers and irreverent children, a couple of long-eared giants walked side by side, Khujand towering over every other person there aside from the ogron (it was so abnormally intelligent for its kind that most of the locals had started saying 'he' instead of 'it') and Cecilia towering over almost everyone else, save three of the four tauren wandering around. Dozens of people were jabbering away in different languages - Common had not come to predominate on Draenor the way it had on Azeroth given its extraterrestrial status - and different habits of interpersonal relations. And through it all, there were surprisingly few conflicts, only a handful of arguments here and there over items without marked prices and, all in all, a very congenial atmosphere hanging over the Refuge.

It was so relaxing that, for the first time, Khujand didn't pull away when Cecilia held his hand while walking in front of other members of the Horde. As they made their way toward one of what she told him were several inns built on the grass next to the central platform of the Refuge, a group of two orcs, a tauren and another troll shot the couple a series of bewildered looks that they both tactfully ignored.

"Hail Blook beater!" chirped the enormous ogron construction worker, his single eyebrow turned up in a friendly manner.

"Oh, nice ta see ya again Blook," Khujand answered with a bit of surprise as Cecilia giggled at their reactions to each other.

The giant cyclopean didn't miss a beat. "Would you like to get beaten?"

The night elf warrior covered her mouth with her free hand, not wanting to embarrass either her fiance or their new, pleasantly simplistic friend.

"Maybe next time, Blook," Khujand answered incredulously as a diverse gaggle of children took turns trying to climb the ogron.

"Fifty percent off all beatings!"

"Blook, I win every time," Khujand said with so much confusion that his sentence almost sounded like a question. "And didnshya say ya wanna be a role model for tha kids?"

"You're right, beater boss!"

"I'm not ya boss man, we just frien-"

"I love you."

"What?"

The jolly ogron was already bounding down the road to skip rocks (read: boulders) across a lake with the local children before he could even explain where in the world his last comment came from. Cecilia was doubled over with laughter.

"I think he's sweet," she chortled as she pulled Khujand along toward the hawkers in front of the inn.

He rubbed the back of his neck before shaking his head. "Guess no matter what, I can't find it in me ta dislike him."

Right in front of the inn was a native draenei family pushing a cart, the mother and father hard at work preparing some sort of fruit on a stick dipped in a light brown viscuous liquid. The children, despite appearing to be pre-teens, were rather skillfully taking and handing over the orders of customers. Their clothes looked professionally-made but were covered in stains from the goopy sauce, and although the whole family of four appeared happy they also appeared almost overworked.

The sight of a night elf holding hands with a jungle troll - both of whom were tall enough to be seen from quite a distance in the crowd - right in public with their own respective faction members staring was enough to even draw the attention of the two hardworking draenei parents.

"Hey, let's try some of these!" Cecilia exclaimed while already sliding a few coins over the little fold-out table top on the side of the cart. "Could we have two?"

The draenei daughter shot a confused look back to her father, who then took a step forward and spoke in Orcish. "I'm sorry, were you asking for two?"

Linguistic mishaps weren't uncommon in such a multiracial place, though a number of the Azerothian adventurers had begun to whisper to one another. Khujand turned to look curiously, though the sweep of the big blue man's mohawk-topped head caused most to grow wide-eyed and continue with their business.

"I'm sorry," Cecilia chortled in Orcish. "Yes, two of those, please." The father and daughter both smiled at how quickly the elf code-switched to a language they understood and handed the two treats over to the two odd, irreverent customers.

With a mischevious grin, Khujand had already held his own treat-on-a-stick down for Cecilia to eat, evoking a muffled, slightly perturbed chuckle as she bit forward to stop it from dribbling on her chin. Breaking all rules of elven propriety regarding public behavior of couples, she tried to stick her own treat up at his face and missed by half a foot to the side. A small herd of children, amused by the giant couple, lined up at the cart so they could try to smear the treats on each others' faces as well, and most of the Azerothians passing by seemed to lighten up a little at the infectious behavior.

As he leaned over and finished up the tasty treat in a single bite, Khujand noticed Cecilia looking back and forth between him and an onlooker near a small public water fountain. Turning to see what she was looking at, he was shocked enough to pull away from her a few inches and he immediately felt her tense as the sensation of her hand being enclosed in his was ripped away.

"Khujand?" asked the very much alive sounding voice of an unusually large Forsaken who had been having a rather tense exchange of his own with a red-robed blood elf. "My God, man, this day really has been a long string of odd coincidences."

The Forsaken's healthy voice and refined demeanor contrasted sharply with his aura. He was more than a head taller than even many human warriors, and his entire head was concealed by a light metal mask and helmet. Not an inch of his body was visible underneath his expensive clothing, but there was something about him that alerted all those around him to his undead status. Although he kept a rapier sheathed at the side of his belt, his very educated-sounding manner of speaking Common, bright, intelligent-looking eyes and upscale civilian clothes all insinuated that even undead could be people of culture.

"Valmar?" Khujand asked with a hint of nervous recognition, not noticing Cecilia's somewhat lost expression as she stood next to him idly with her hands at her sides. "Oh...well, it's been more than a year, hasn't it?"

Despite much of the attention on the long-eared couple having tapered off, eyes were focused in their direction as several people standing nearby moved noticeably to make way for the craggy-faced, red-haired elf. His long, flowing crimson robes and staff with a fel green orb at the top of it signified him as a Blood Mage. His demeanor was about as close as a hardened, stern blood elf could be to 'casual,' though even the beefy troll was visibly put off by the presence of such a potentially dangerous wizard. Cecilia folded her arms in front of her slowly as she searched for something inanimate to look at.

"We were on the inside together," Valmar explained to his disinterested companion. "I once saw this man shank a former platoon commander over a stolen hot dog, he's that serious." Valmar turned back to his old friend now, not seeming to notice Cecilia reaching to cling to Khujand's elbow without looking up at him. "Hey, we have some serious matters to attend to in the Spires of Arakk. You should come-"

"Not necessary," interjected the Blood Mage, likely attempting to be dismissive but also saving the large jungle troll from turning down a request for assistance from a former cell block buddy - an offense with a gravity that he worried wouldn't be understood by those who had never done hard time in prison, not even his fiance. "As much as I understand your elation at crossing paths with an old acquaintance, it must not escape your attention that since he's here, you will be able to reminisce again in the future. Our affairs in the region south of here, however, are time-sensitive."

Khujand's eyes got wider, causing Cecilia to look up to him perplexed. The cool reaction of the Forsaken only increased his surprise.

"Well...I do suppose you have a point," Valmar sighed without seeming annoyed at all. "Khujand, my associate and I do have some rather crucial affairs to attend to in the Spires. Before we leave - do tell, what is your current situation here? I was under the impression that you wouldn't yet have been released."

About two or three minutes into the brief reunion with one of his old prison buddies, the nameless draenei and the mage - named Professor Seraph, apparently - who seemed incapable of any facial expression other than closing his eyes lightly when he found something amusing, Khujand felt Cecilia lean her head on his shoulder in the middle of the conversation. Feeling the muscles in his cheeks creak as he realized how left-out he must have caused her to feel, he tried to both bring her into the conversation and cut it short at the same time.

"This is Cecilia, by tha way," the guilty troll said as he wrapped his arm around his stiff fiance's shoulder. Her face betrayed little emotion as she seemed to have crawled into her shell. "We met here on tha campaign, up north in Gorgrond."

The Forsaken and the blood elf shifted uncomfortably at the introduction, mumbling their helloes and how-do-you-dos quietly before the professor tapped his staff on the ground. It was obviously to prompt Valmar to cut the conversation short, though several passersby jumped at the sight of the Blood Mage fiddling with his frightening arcane staff.

"Well, anyway Khujand," Valmar started with a snap of his head as though he were returning from a daydream. "Now that I know where you're staying in Frostfire, you can be sure that I'll write once my own living situation is squared away."

"Ya welcome ta come up any time, man," he answered as he rubbed Cecilia's shoulder in a conciliatory act that only made her and the trio in front of them even more uncomfortable. "There're more and more jobs every day, plus we get alotta quests up there from people that can't do their own dirty work."

Chuckling awkwardly while shaking hands, the two travelers made their way to the flight master, the crowd parting ways as they walked to give the Blood Mage wide berth. Khujand didn't wait for them to drop completely out of view in the crowd before he switched to Darnassian to attempt damage control.

"I'm sorry," he apologized as he put both hands on her shoulders in an attempt to catch a glimpse of her downcast eyes. "Cici, this ain't a normal situation, I swear. Ya know what it was like in there. I..."

She looked up at him finally, her expression emotionless with the exception of her flaring nostrils - a sign only he and Irien recognized as her 'I'm upset but we're in public' face. His heavy brow strained as he felt the pain he had caused, and he stroked her deep mauve cheek with his finger.

"Let's go ta an inn and drop all this gear, yeah? We got time ta ourselves before tha moon rises. We can sort things out once we by ourselves."

Cecilia continued looking up into his eyes blankly. Her nostrils were still flaring, but she nodded her head and when he took her hand in his, she didn't pull away. Leading her to an area with three traveler's hostels right next to each other, Khujand pointed to one with a taller doorway than the others which signaled that it had beds large enough for travelers their size.

Their room wasn't particularly spacious, but the bed was both comfortable and sturdy, with pillows thick enough for the necks and heads of people draenei-sized or larger and enough closet space for robes or gowns designed for people over seven feet tall. They unpacked in silence, working quickly in anticipation of getting a few hours rest; they still had planned to meet another couple they got off on the wrong foot with for dinner, and then a whole other day for their sixth month anniversary. Khujand wanted nothing more than for it to be an entirely blissful vacation from their work duties, and he knew Cecilia did as well, but they were both crestfallen after the previous exchange.

As always, Cecilia finished unpacking first; at her advanced age, her experience with everything from hunting to fighting to repairing her own clothing to even simple, everyday things like organizing her room or unpacking her bags allowed her to perform every task in the same speedy yet skillful way. As much as she truly didn't miss her people's drone-like lifestyle during the Long Vigil, certain positive habits had stayed with her; all of her own clothing and items were stocked and organized in the rented room as though an entire team of cleaners had swept through.

She sat on the edge of her bed - legs crossed, hands folded, eyes down - as she waited for her fiance to finish. Once he had finally thrown his final pair of two-toed socks into a dresser drawer, he immediately moved to her spot and knelt down on a single bended knee in front of her. With one of her hands clasped between his, he kissed her knuckles lightly as she spoke - a reverent habit he had that made her feel uncomfortably celebrated but which she tolerated due to the comfort it brought him on those very few occasions when they upset each other.

"You don't need to apologize again," Cecilia started, already feeling what he was thinking. She tried to resist his grip on her hands as she always did, and he obstinately refused to release her as he always did. "I'd never doubt your sincerity. I just thought we were past this."

Khujand remained kneeling as he looked up at her remorsefully. As comfortable and open as they had grown with each other during the past half year, he still had difficulty expressing himself when he felt he had done wrong. He knew he was with the most perceptive person he had ever met, and Cecilia's hyperirritability had decreased dramatically since they had been together. They both felt lucky to have each other, but resolving disputes was still new territory.

"This wasn't normal, okay?" he repeated, another nervous habit of his. "Ya know what it was like. Ya stayed only a month on tha inside; imagine six years. Valmar and I got along, but we saw things back at tha slave labor camp. He just showed up now...I mean, I never thought I'd bump inta him again, and it put me back in that place."

She acquiesed to his prying fingers and opened her palm for him to start kissing her fingertips despite the tickling. "We've been through the chances before," she tried to explain for the third time. "That you and I met in Gorgrond wasn't such a coincidence; all adventurers will be flowing here. That you'll meet more people from your past while here is not only possible, but highly probable."

"I'm tryin', Cici, but this is only tha...I dunno, fifth time I found somebody from my past. Tha third was finally findin' tha greatest person I know..."

He pulled a strand of her hair loose only so he could tuck it back behind her ear again, finally eliciting a warm smile despite her still somewhat sad eyes. "Another time ya weren't there and tha guy didn't recognize me anyway. Another time...well...I swear, tha more it happens, tha better I will get. And I'm gettin' better about not carin' when we around other Azerothian people, right?"

She nodded with a look of both resignation and understanding. Her nostrils flared but less noticeably, and she held eye contact - a double-edged sword when either of them needed to retain the other's attention. "I'm not a mindless...automaton, like during the Vigil," she said with a mixture of fatigue and empathy in her voice as she ran her fingers through his mane. "I can't just turn my feelings off with the push of a button. I know you didn't mean it, but it takes time for the sting to heal, even when small."

Sensing both her physical and emotional weariness, Khujand rose and then lied down on the bed, and Cecilia crawled into his arms without hesitation; neither of them even bothered to change out of their clothes.

"I promise, I will get over this habit," he whispered to her. "We gonna live a normal life, and act like a normal couple. Ya gonna see."

"I know we will," she sighed wearily. "You're my secret weakness. The only one who can affect me like that."

"Ya tha same for me, ya know that. I react that way cause...well..." He trailed off as he found no words to express himself. He didn't need to; even after he had upset her, he knew she could feel him.

"You don't have to explain. I understand, you're still learning how to live again. Please, just keep trying to adjust. For us."

With no window in the specific room they had rented and without the candles lit, there was a soothing darkness surrounding two pairs of dimly glowing eyes as they felt each other breathe. They both knew things would be alright as long as they were patient with one another, and the thought helped them both to drift off and rest from all the hiking that day.

* * *

The open deck at the rickety, log-cabin food shack run together by two draenei and orc families was so noisy and bustling that evening that the sound of Cecilia and Elizra chattering away in Common was almost drowned out. The former sentinel normally wasn't so talktive around anyone other than her fiance and her close circle of friends, but Elizra was so energetic and bubbly when relaxed that Cecilia couldn't help but be affected. Tyron, for his part, was just as passive and content to sit back and listen as Khujand, and once the wolf man was out of his armor and not waving a sword around, the night elf found that the two men were similar in interests if not in mannerisms and demeanor.

There were at least twenty wooden tables set up on the smooth sandstone deck that was ringed by a two-foot high wall of the same material. Despite having only cropped up when goblin money began flowing in from Azeroth, the masonry work was absolutely stunning - so stunning that the two men provided an unwitting source of laughter for the two women when they began seriously discussing the craftsmanship of a two-foot high wall nobody other than them and Vegnus, were he there, would care about. Every last chair was occupied and there were even a few patrons leaning against that magnificent two-foot high wall as they joked loudly with their companions. The servers, like with so many establishments run by natives of Draenor, were the children, nephews and neices of the owners and they all hurried to handle all the orders and requests flying their way.

The multiracial mileu - what a swell word - along with the sincere gratitude of the worgen couple helped Cecilia and Khujand both to unwind from their earlier low point, and they soon found themselves trying to step on each others' feet and brush fingertips underneath the table as they spoke to their new friends. Most of their meal had been finished by that point and they were only waiting for the two men to finish rummaging through the remaining scraps while their dessert was prepared.

"It hasn't even been a full day and we've found work, by the way," Elizra beamed, appearing thrilled at their change of fortune after having lost their talbuk and most of their gear only about twelve hours ago.

"That's wonderful! There really are so many ways to do well by doing good during the campaign," Cecilia answered with a legitimate interest that only raised the spirits of the gradually less and less downtrodden Gilnean couple. "What will you both be doing?"

Elizra shot her suddenly shy husband a giddy glance as she straightened her back and folded her hands into her lap. "Tyron here was enlisted by the Auchenai Defenders! They were previously all natives of this planet, but they've started accepting those from Azeroth with sufficient combat experience."

She reached over and squeezed her husband's hand swiftly. "He actually knocked over one of the larger Defenders during training. They were quite impressed." Tyron looked down into his lap, a nearly embarrassed smile creeping in at the sides of his snout. It wasn't strange for Cecilia to recognize normal emotions on a face so different from her own, given that she's spent decades learning to speak Ursine during the Long Vigil.

In another peace offering that he may not have had the social skills to pull off just a few months before, Khujand apparently did his best to flatter his new friend in front of the guy's wife.

"I can believe it," the jungle troll chimed in. "He sure knocked my ass down this mornin'." He rubbed the back of his neck as though it were sore for effect.

Ears perked up slightly, Tyron remained fixated on his lap though there was a contented sound from his lungs as Elizra tilted her head to look at her husband again proudly. Cecilia shot Khujand one of those 'I see what you did there' looks while running her pointer finger along the inside of his out of view of the worgen. That the socially maladjusted troll had managed to open up to her group of Alliance coworkers months ago after they had quite literally saved him in the wilds of Gorgrond was one thing; for her fiance to get along so well with a proud member of the Alliance who had tried to jump him that same day was a whole other level of bridge-building.

Once the moment had passed, Cecilia let go of Khujand's hand to rest her elbow on the table and lean toward Elizra. "So are you with the Sunreavers?"

The whole table shared a laugh just as hearty as those they heard at the tables around them, and they all seemed to forget that such a meeting wouldn't be possible on many cities - well, perhaps most - on their home planet.

"Not quite yet," Elizra chirped, or at least approached as near to chirping as a Gilnean could. "There is an interfactional infirmary tent that's been set up on the main central platform. My shift happens to be at the same time as Tyron's, so it will work out rather well once we start duty tomorrow morning."

"We're really glad things have worked out for you two," Cecilia chirped right back without even noticing. "I hope that the next time we have a longer break from our respective jobs, we'll be able to come back here to Auchindoun."

"Any time! Please, any time," Elizra laughed as her eyes spied their dessert heading toward the table. Khujand was already rising by the time the server had arrived.

"I need ta hit tha fraternities before we start," he stated far too formally, and Cecilia realized that he had forgotten the polite word in Common for toilets.

The three languages her fiance had learned aside from his mother tongue - which he was slowly teaching her to speak - were all learned informally. Orcish, he claimed he had learned through friends after the Darkspear joined the Horde; Common and Darnassian, he had started learning in Ashenvale during the Third War when the Alliance, night elves and Horde all fought side by side as allies and then later when he was monitoring Alliance and night elven prisoners all day for a year at Mor'shan. Cecilia's entire relationship with him was based on Darnassian, her language, and both their letters and constant talking while together were better than any formal lessons. Still, the fact that none of his four languages were even remotely related to one another must have been taxing considering how short his lifespan was compared to hers, and he frequently seemed to forget words he didn't use regularly.

Hiding a snicker by pretending to scratch her snout, Elizra turned to her husband. "Tyron, could you point it out to him?"

Nodding as he stood, Tyron lead the way and the two tall, rather fierce looking fighters exited the deck in front of the food shack and started on a dirt path between the sparse patch of trees that started within the settled area of the Refuge and continued out for a ways. Once the menfolk were out of view, there was a comfortable lull in the conversation despite Cecilia and Elizra themselves having done most of the talking before. As the former sentinel watched the thinnest pandaren she'd ever seen walk with a group of Horde friends down the same path, she marveled at the diversity of the campaign against the Iron Horde. Having worked for the Steamwheedle Cartel for so long, Cecilia had become quite worldly compared to other Kaldorei of her generation and rather enjoyed meeting people from different cultures and races.

Something changed in the atmosphere, however, and she continued looking down the path toward the latrines as she tried to decipher what exactly the issue was.

"Elizra...how exactly did you describe the bandits that attacked you and Tyron before?" Cecilia asked as she fixated on the path. The worgen woman didn't respond for a long time and the night elf finally turned toward her. "Elizra?"

A look of horror plastered to her face, Elizra began to shrink in her seat as though she'd seen a ghost. Shifting from bubbly to afraid, her eyes were fixated on a person standing behind Cecilia as she stared. Something was very wrong.

"Grue sends his regards," whispered a human voice from behind that made her skin crawl.

Cecilia's eyes grew wide as she realized who it was. She only had a split second before several other patrons screamed and she leaned far over to the left in her seat.

::SLAM::

The man swung a knife toward her neck, missing at the last moment and slamming the blade ineffectively into the table. Her millennia of martial training kicking in, Cecilia shoved the table forward into Elizra - she would be fine - and threw herself backward into her assailant, looping her arm around his and swinging him into empty chairs left by fleeing, screaming patrons as she looked up to see Earl Goldthwaite, after nearly half a decade, wearing the robes of a blasphemous priest.

"Say hello to Angela for me!" the greasy human with exruciatingly severe body odor bellowed as he swung again.

Bobbing to a kneeling position, Cecilia moved her head below not only Earl's dagger but two more from grubby looking human associates of his despite being a foot and a half taller than all of them. In the same motion, she slipped a hand into her left boot and gripped the hilt of a dirk she always carried around with her, no matter what the occasion.

There was only one more split second. More patrons were screaming and trying to run as two more assailants, orcs this time, jumped over chairs to surround her. Instinct took over as Cecilia remained in a crouching position, waiting for just the right moment when all of a sudden-

"Blook smash!"

::SMASH::

The gigantic ogron construction worker literally grabbed the head of one of the orcs wearing similar robes between his massive index finger and thumb. With one heave, Blook lifted the thug into the air and slammed him into the ground with a sickening thud signalling death beyond a shadow of a doubt. Using the distraction to her advantage, Cecilia flicked her dirk to the left, turning the human on that side into a pez dispenser. He didn't even have a chance to counterstrike before he dropped to the ground, gushing blood all over the concrete. A second swipe by Earl and his remaining associate resulted in another dodge from his blade and the severing of the arteries in the associate's wrist, causing the man to back up from the strategically crouching elf to clutch his slashed wrist in futility.

Panicking, the other Orcish thug tried to run in the other direction, only to discover that the barrel of a hunting rifle was the last thing he would see.

::BLAM::

More patrons began screaming and running as Irien Rainsong, Cecilia and Khujand's best friend, unloaded a technically illegal hollow-tipped round into the thug's forehead, blowing his entire head to smithereens.

Earl swung with his blade one more time, but he lacked the speed of a warrior of the night with thousands of years of experience. One fell swoop and Cecilia had risen to her full height and arced back downard with her dirk, piercing the top of Earl's skull like it was a holiday pumpkin as she drove her own blade through his cranium and into his brain. She shoved it in all the way to the hilt and didn't even bother grabbing his weapon hand, allowing it to fall to his side as she stepped back.

For a moment, Earl stood paralyzed in front of her and she knew that he was still alive. Taking one last look into his disgusting eyes, she stretched her hand forward and poked him in the chest with one finger, watching him slowly tip back and hit the ground like a felled tree.

The scene was utter chaos. Elizra had found Anushka who herself had somehow shown up out of nowhere with Irien, and the worgen and draenei were both crying and clinging to each other for dear life. Many of the patrons filtered back in to gawk at the gory scene, and Blook reveled in the positive feedback as he flexed for the crowd.

Irien slung her rifle over her shoulder and sauntered over to Cecilia like she hadn't just totally shot someone in the face. "Where's Khujand?" she asked curiously.

* * *

Dressed in another pair of baggy brown, knee-length pants worn by the Darkspear along with matching leather sandals and vest - shirtlessness was socially acceptable for the menfolk of his people and Cecilia's but not most other civilized races - Khujand noticed that the shorter races and even shorter members of the Alliance weren't avoiding him as they usually did. Tyron was wearing a long sleeved white shirt that wasn't buttoned up all the way as though he were going to a party, and Khujand imagined that the wolf man might have felt more at home within the more diverse settlement as well.

After meandering down the beaten path for half a minute or so, they were out of view of the people on the deck and at a small clearing with several outhouses. The area was strangely empty as though nobody needed to go to the bathroom that night.

"Be careful," Tyron warned seriously. "They aren't particularly clean. I can try to find a bucket of water if you need."

Khujand's heart thumped from his squeamishness about toilet hygeine as he realized what he might be about to see. "I don't want ta impose, but-"

"It's alright, my friend. I'll try to be quick."

With that the worgen was off, and Khujand was left with privacy as he prepared himself to face something awful. Opening the door to the nearest outhouse to him, he noticed the comparatively weak odor, lack of lighting and the spaciousness of the interior. With such a varied group of visitors that might include ogres and ettin, equal-opportunity fraternities would need to have room to maneuver.

Khujand hesitated before entering. He had conquered his social anxiety about many situations, but public bathrooms was not one of them. The door hung open as he stood there, and he took two steps inside without closing it. There was still enough space between him and the actual toilet itself such that he could have stretched out had he wanted.

His heart rate wouldn't slow down for some odd reason, though; perhaps it was the lack of a visible wash basin. Tyron had said he would be quick, so there technically wasn't anything to worry about.

Except the knife that was slid around from the back of his head and held against his neck.

"That ain't funny, Tyro-"

"Tye-rone isn't here," a voice rasped to him in Orcish as the cold steel of the knife was tapped against the skin of Khujand's neck. He held his hands up; his regeneration had got him through a lot of awful wounds, but there was no reason to take chances. He'd seen enough nasty altercations in prison (and participated in a few of his own) to know his coinpurse wasn't worth a sliced ear or nose.

But the knife-wielder wasn't reaching for his coinpurse.

"You're one tough motherfucker to find, you know that?" the young man who was obviously a native speaker of Orcish asked. The youth was familiar, and spoke as though he knew the jungle troll. Where had he heard that voice before?

"Yeah," the young orc crooned as two more sets of footsteps scuffed around in the clearing. "Spent months paying people to watch you back at Thunder Pass, waiting to see when you would leave. Heard you went into Gorgrond, but I couldn't get anybody to Beastwatch in time - what with the lack of Frostfire-Gorgrond flights back then."

He had heard this voice before, but it wasn't threatening like this. It had been shouting in fear. Where?

"You were going back and forth to Gorgrond quite a bit after that, and this hasn't been the first time you came to Talador either." The more the youth continued, the closer the memory seemed to float toward the surface. "Alliance cities, according to the rumors; no way to chase someone like you in there."

The youth's free hand nudged the back of Khujand's shoulder, ordering him to step forward a bit further into the outhouse. The other two people hanging behind didn't follow.

"My friends died out there, you know," the young man said in a voice that was far too calm for the information he was imparting. "You cut them up bad, real bad. The temperature was below freezing that night, though the blood loss was enough. Only I made it over to the next settlement, and I almost gave up on trying to catch you outside of a safe zone."

The free hand tugged on Khujand's vest, motioning for him to turn around and face his attacker. He kept his hands raised and as he rotated, the youth who wouldn't just shut the hell up and instigate something...wouldn't shut the hell up.

"And here I am, trying my best to survive on honorable work of looting Alliance caravans on a planet with largely undefended highways when I happen upon some wolf man asshole who knows how to handle a sword. Lost two more of my men, I did."

Khujand had turned around entirely now. There was no interior lighting, but the red glow of his voodoo helped him to see just enough in the dark.

"And now, here I find you, consorting with the enemy. Betraying your faction and your brothers, first for the sake of that little whore outside that tavern back in Thunder Pass, and now for some big whore you won't stop playing footsie with under the table out at the food shack."

Fury rose in Khujand's chest like he hadn't felt since the last raid he had participated in. First at the insult to the memory of an innocent girl who made the best with what she had. Second at the insult to the wise woman he shared an unfathomably deep love with. Third at the realization of just who he was talking to.

The stupid-looking leather headband. The light blue, poorly applied headband paint. The missing ear. The piggish, oinking manner of speaking. It all clicked.

This was one of the three young punks who assaulted Jarinta half a year ago. The other two had died and this piece of trash still thought he deserved revenge for having been thwarted in his crime.

Khujand lashed out at the same time that cool steel ate into his neck. His fist crashed into the orc's face, shattering its cheekbone beyond what any healer on all of Azeroth or Draenor could repair and snapping the orbital bone that held the eyeball in the socket. The entire eye was hanging by an optic nerve within half a second from the knockback of the punch and the Shadow Hunter distinctly heard the familiar sound he remembered from wartime when the ligaments in someone's jaw were ripped apart due to the force with which the bone was dislocated from the skull.

The orc fell in a heap at the jungle troll's feet as there was scuffling of another person entering the fray outside. Khujand coughed up blood and when he tried to suck in air, nothing reached his lungs.

He caught himself on the door frame with one hand as he started to fall forward and reached to his neck to feel that the knife had sliced his wind pipe clean open and was now lodged in his carotid artery, gushing blood all over his vest.


	3. The Dance

**A/N: I don't own Warcraft. Or Draenor. I do own the graphic violence at the beginning and the disgustingly cute couple fluff at the end.**

Bracing himself on the door frame, Khujand felt the area around the knife sticking in his throat for any other injuries. Aside from the two most grievous ones, he appeared to be unscathed. The blood soaking his vest and slow asphyxiation, however, were more than enough to worry about.

By tucking his chin down, he could sort of hold the deep but thin cut into his wind pipe closed, and he finally felt a small amount of air reach his lungs. The knife's blade had pushed right into one of the two major arteries in his neck, but had been left inside at such an angle that it was plugging the wound closed for the time being, and he leaned his head to the side to keep it that way. He had always possessed a high threshhold for pain, but in this case the knowledge of the danger he was in far outweighed any physical pain.

Ignoring the fight that had erupted outside, Khujand looked down to the threat at hand. The one-eared orc's entire face had swollen already from when the jungle troll's punch had pulverized its cheekbone. The eyeball on the left side of its face was hanging out of the socket and dangling by the nerve, a disgusting sight even to someone with combat experience. It's jaw had been dislocated and was slacked open at an abnormal angle.

Chances couldn't be taken, however. Stepping onto the orc's forehead, Khujand pressed his entire body weight down until he heard the orc's cranium crunch, its head swelling quickly in an even more disgusting display as the punk was damaged beyond even a resurrection spell.

"Help, he's got me - argh!" groaned another orc in their native language as the gurgle of someone being stabbed in the stomach was heard.

The commotion seemed to reach through the trees all the way back to the restaurant, and there were civilians screaming. The noise wasn't enough for a military assault, though - it sounded like a large brawl that had died down.

There was only another second to stand bracing he doorway before another threat presented itself.

"It's all over!" shouted the voice of a pandaren speaking Orcish.

Looking up, there was an abnormally lean pandaren rogue before him, raising an axe above its head as its underfed frame shook with rage.

Without even thinking, Khujand used the last of his mana as his eyes glowed even brighter. He still hadn't learned a spell to heal himself - if he lived through this, he swore it was the first thing he would do next - but his trump card had even been enough to even bring Blackhand, the Iron Horde general at the Blackrock Foundry, to his knees.

"What therggghdsfh!" croaked the leather-clad, lean pandaren as it hunched forward and fumbled to retain its grip on its axe.

Focusing his power despite the poor oxygen intake and gradual blood loss, Khujand allowed his voodoo to seep out as he hexed his second attacker. He lacked the energy to transform the rogue all the way into a critter, but a half-transformation was even more terrifying in many ways.

With a nauseating splurching sound from its insides, the pandaren's back curved unnaturally as the voodoo magic forcibly altered its posture and skeletal structure. The fur on the left side of its head fell out in clumps as its left ear melted into its scalp flesh and a cockroach's antenna pierced through its skin. Its left arm shrank in length, though the actual metamorphosis stopped there - Khujand was fading fast, and the exertion could end up hurting him as well given his weakened state. Sufficed with allowing the hex spell to simply toy with the pandaren's insides, he watched as dozens of white, ghostly apparitions with glowing red eyes like his rose from the surface of his body and arced into the pandaren, stretching and folding its skin painfully.

Still trying to raise its axe for the killing blow, the pandaren rogue with pure hatred in his eyes was interrupted by a short sword being shoved through its chest in a massive backstab. Khujand released his spell as his attacker fell to its now misshapen knees, revealing Tyron standing behind it. The worgen's fancy white ballroom dance shirt was stained with orc and pandaren blood as he grinned triumphantly. The second orc lied unarmed behind him, and Khujand realized that Tyron must have slayed it with its own blade before turning to the pandaren.

"We did it! We...oh! Mister Khujand, your neck!"

Though Tyron was a capable arms warrior, he didn't appear to be much of a combat medic, and he froze as though he was struggling to think of what to do.

"Ya wife," Khujand gurgled as he tried to hold the knife blade in place within his artery. "She can heal."

Finally getting the point, Tyron moved forward and threw Khujand's free arm over his shoulder, carrying most of the jungle troll's weight as they made their way back to the dying commotion of the restaurant. Khujand's breathing was cut off but still enough for him to survive...for a while. The blood, however, continued to spill even with the cut mostly closed by the knife that had caused it.

Though pain was never a problem for the jungle troll, he knew that this burning sting in his neck signaled something very serious. With every slow step they took, he felt his energy wane, his consciousness fade and more and more of his weight shifted onto the worgen warrior's shoulders. Keeping his chin tucked down to avoid more blood and oxygen loss, Khujand was denied of a clear view of the restaurant.

"He just came out of nowhere!" squaked a disturbed arakkoa patron.

"Blook beat bad guys!"

"No! No, why the happenings now!" sobbed a hysterical voice he recognized as Anushka's despite not having seen her at the restaurant before.

"Oh God, honey, what happened?" asked Elizra with a calmness that was consoling, her professionalism as a healer apparent.

"The robbers, dear!" growled Tyron with a harsh sense of urgency. "The same ones that attacked us! That orc with the stupid looking headband stabbed mister Khujand!"

The voices sounded as though they were drifting further away despite Elizra's approach, and Khujand's vision darkened. Even by the standards of trolls, his regeneration was strong, and with a professional healer around he shouldn't have much to worry about. He'd had a lung punctured while cutting down a doomguard during the final push of the Battle of Mount Hyjal and fought on due to battlefield healers; he could live through this.

Elizra pointed to the ground and said something, and he felt Tyron cradle his head while lowering him. Following their instructions, he sat down slowly and lied back, seeing Kiul, his dear draenei friend and debate partner, waving onlookers away.

Slumping to the side, he could spy the rest of the carnage: several more punks had been killed, and a few of the patrons who happened to have combat training were standing over the corpses with their weapons readied. The nearest corpse to him was a greasy human with a bad combover that had a dirk Cecilia often carried on the inside of her left boot sticking out from the top of his head.

"I'm going to cast my sleep spell on you," Elizra said from some faraway place. "It will help with the healing. Everything will go dark now."

"She's passed out!"

The last thing he saw was the tall figure of a dark elf with azure hair collapsing before him while several people tried to catch her before she fell.

Then everything went dark.

* * *

The first sensation to return was the warm air in his lungs. Before anything else could be felt, his own breathing let him know that he was still alive. Khujand savored it for a moment, revelling in the simple fact that his body was inhaling and exhaling on its own accord. He had survived.

Not that it was a pleasant experience, but he had expected to survive.

His body felt warm, but that was natural given the time of year. That he could recall the time of year and the fight that had occurred meant his mind was clear, so he was healing well.

Searching for sound, he could hear feet shuffling on the other side of a cloth sheet. It must be an infirmary tent; he had spent time in one after Hyjal. The monotonous wait was usually more excruciating than the pain of injury, but it still meant that one had survived. There could be no complaining about that.

He could smell leather and dried blood; it must be his vest. Before he could sense anything else, the aroma of sandalwood wafted over to him and he became too eager. Forcing his eyes open, the brightness both blinded and winded him, and he slipped back out of consciousness.

Feet were still shuffling around his room in the infirmary tent when he woke again, but there was no way of knowing how long it had been. When he smelled his fiance again, he kept his eyes closed, knowing that with them both safe, he would be able to let his body rest. Perhaps testing his vocal cords would be less strenuous.

"Hmmmmm..." he hummed as he became drowsy again, but didn't pass out.

The aroma became stronger as he felt a weight less than his sit down on the bed next to him, and he knew it was Cecilia. Long, claw-like fingernails gently scratched his scalp at the base of his mane, and he felt so relaxed that he didn't even need to lean in. For a very long time, the two of them sat, no words being necessary at first.  
When enough time had passed for his to take full breaths without feeling pain in his neck or grogginess in his mind, he opened his eyes to see her face once more. Her expression wasn't quite clear at first, but he could tell she was looking at him.

"How long was I out for?" he asked as he reached up to cup her face in his hand. She pressed her palm to his fingers as she leaned in to his heat, the deep sense of sadness and relief once again demonstrating how millennia of an emotionless state had been completely reversed by only a decade of living as a mortal.

Those two pure silver pupils locked onto his gaze, never blinking as she spoke even more to him than just the words spilling from those two violet-blue lips. "Elizra put you under since last night to aid your regeneration," she explained with a softness unlike someone who had already buried so many wounded comrades. "I suppose that would make it more than twelve hours now. It's early morning."

Each time he breathed, he could feel the still existant wound on his neck flesh, though it felt only slightly scratched from the inside - a world of difference from how it had felt when Elizra first put him under.

It only took a few minutes for him to explain what happened - with Jarinta all those months ago, the three punks he throttled, the insane one-eared orc's revenge story. The most important detail was that it was all over, and with the last of the three dead, he no longer had any enemies - on Draenor, at least. Earl Goldthwaite, the greasy human, was already known to them both from her old Booty Bay stories. How those two punks had met each other was a story Elizra had detailed to her, the way all of their paths crossing years later too bizarre for anybody to make up. But it was over; those chasing all four of them down for revenge were now killed.

She looked right into his soul and although he had healed up remarkably fast, he knew she would likely cling to him even more than usual for the rest of their vacation. Not that his clingy self minded; as he looked right back into her, he was once again reminded of how much he stood to lose were he not to keep his wits about him during a war.

"Was it ya that fell?" Khujand asked, remembering the last think he saw before the sleep spell.

Cecilia nodded while staring at him with those sad eyes. The apprehension within her was apparent though she didn't try to dodge the subject.

"What happened?" he asked.

She skipped a beat to breathe deeply before answering as though it would be a great strain. "I've never seen you hurt before," she whispered with her ears dropping down. "I mean...I saw you take damage a few times...but I've never seen you really in danger of..." Her voice weakened and trailed off before she shut her mouth quickly, attempting to compose herself.

As Khujand continued to be captivated by Cecilia's eyes - two lights that always shone for him, the standards of her people be damned - he sensed a vulnerability inside of her that he had never felt before. She didn't try to hide it, though he was sure that she had never felt it before either. Removing his hand from her face, she clasped it in both of hers and began kissing his knuckles as he would so often do with her. Normally, he would have pulled away - his reverence and respect for her wisdom and age convinced him that it was different when he did it - but he didn't resist. He could sense something within her now - a confession she was trying and failing to hold back.

"Whatever ya might think of what it is…" he whispered up to his fiance with a sincerity and warmth that caused her to cease her hand-kissing for a moment. "…ya know that I will never think it redundant or without value. Please, say it out loud. I already know it's there."

Still clutching his hand in hers, she flashed him a sad smile as she began to speak. "Uryndil passed away last month," she started in reference to one of the two male elf Druids assigned to Serenity Grove, her ancestral glade, after the end of the Long Vigil. The other had been her uncle Elindir, who was thankfully still alive but likely ageing just a rapidly.

Sensing the crushing weight of the news on her shoulders, Khujand actually murmured a last rite used in temples of Elune she had taught him, and for a split second the sadness disappeared from her smile.

"How did ya find out all tha way from back home?"

"There were some other night elf adventurers passing through Fort Wrynn," Cecilia explained clinically. "There are only a hundred-thousand night elves left on all of Azeroth, give or take, compared to more than twenty-five million humans or perhaps a hundred million or so trolls worldwide. Coupled with the fact that we knew no illness and death for tens of thousands of years, and the passing on of one of our own from old age becomes a major loss for us all."

He reached up with his other hand and took both of hers in his; he had not yet visited her people - it might not even be safe to do so - but he felt her pain. Not only because he detested seeing the only woman he ever truly loved hurt; their bond was such that he felt what she felt and understood the reasons why.

"Did he and Priestess Lamynia ever pledge themselves ta one another?" he asked in reference to the woman who had lead her ancestral home for the entirety of the Long Vigil.

Cecilia clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and the strain in her voice was far too intense for her to only be speaking of the priestess and the druid. "We knew their private consultations were much more than they claimed, but they always kept waiting for 'the appropriate time.' Just waiting and waiting for a time that would never…"

Her voice trailed off as she pursed her lips and broke eye contact. Cecilia was wounded inside and Khujand knew it was about them, and the guilt over his hand in the cause was eating at him already. He stroked her delicate chin with his pointer finger and guided her back to him, knowing - feeling - what it was now.

"I only go on these raids with tha guild ta finish payin' off tha house faster," he whispered to her with an apologetic tone. "I was doin' it for us and I can stop it for us."

Cecilia winced and tried to look away before returning to his gaze again. "The house is useless if I'm not sharing it with you," she whispered shakily with a pain he knew her warrior's heart hated to admit. "My time is drawing near, Khujand," she said a bit more confidently as her apprehension over her sole weakness - him - was already exposed.

"When we made love yesterday in the tent, I was almost too tired for the swim afterward. I wanted to do it again before we left - so bad - but I knew that I would have had to stop to rest on the hike back here. Even without doing it again, my lungs were raw by the time we reached the settlement's main gate. Every night at moonrise I pop my joints more than before and when I deal with bandits and monsters on the highways here, my skill protects me but I know my movement has slowed down even from how I was ten years ago at Hyjal.

"My sister bore two children, two lovely, beautiful children I want to see so much. We haven't spoken in eight years but word gets around among Kaldorei. I know her and know she must have tried for more. Elven birth rates are low as it is, and I'm just afraid…"

As her voice trailed off without breaking, Cecilia sucked in a deep breath and leaned her forehead down onto Khujand's chest. He ran his hands through her long azure locks, their shade almost matching the complexion of his hide. Even so near to retirement she still held the pride of a sentinel, and if she preferred to regain her composure before finishing, he wasn't going to rush her.

After a minute, she sat up and took his hands with hers again. The sadness was still in her eyes, though she was more sure of what she was saying now.

"I am afraid of losing our chance. We believe in fate, but accepting it is difficult now that, for the first time in my twelve-thousand years, I feel like half of my heart belongs to someone else. We're so close to leaving all the war and adventuring behind, so close to finally having peace, raising a family and seeing the products of our love grow into adults themselves. I can't wait much longer, and I can't accept the thought of losing you. You have to stop taking risks, Khujand. No more raiding, no more questing in remote areas. If we still owe money for the house once your parole is finished and we return to Azeroth, we can find honest work in Ratchet."

He reached up without moving his neck, and pulled her down to him by her shoulders. She bent over in her chair next to his hospital bed and laid her upper body across his, her panting heavy as she waited for the waves of fear and anxiety to roll back. He kissed her hair and enjoyed the familiar scent she always wore as they clung to each other, both hoping with all their shared heart and soul that they would never be pulled apart.

"I know we will, and we gonna do whatever it takes," he murmured into her ear with that low rumble he knew made her feel as though everything would be alright. "No more risk-takin', just regular work. We gonna go back ta our home, and live normal. I ain't gonna let anythin' get between us."

* * *

With another day to spare before their six-month anniversary and the night of a family-oriented dance and bazaar in the public square to benefit a local orphanage, it was easy for Cecilia to convince Khujand to spend the rest of that day in the infirmary tent. Elizra and Tyron both stopped by as often as their brand new jobs allowed to check on them, and the healer-slash-field medic was surprised by how powerful the jungle troll's regeneration was. He was already swallowing solid food from the time he woke up that morning, and as he and Cecilia fell in and out of sleep on an irregular schedule across the span of the day, the marks from the cut on both the inside and the outside of his neck disappeared entirely, according to the prognosis Elizra gave based on her ability to 'see' internal wounds.

The elf and the troll weren't alone, as their close friends in the area filtered in and out of their partitioned area in the tent to see how their two friends were doing. Most curiously, Irien - the best friend of Cecilia and now Khujand as well - only stopped to say hello briefly before pulling her elder elf to a corner of the tent behind a curtain to speak in hushed tones by themselves. She didn't even bother saying goobye.

By the time they were ready to check out that early evening - the rest of the healers were amazed that the beefy jungle troll with a bloodstained leather vest appeared completely unhurt within a single day after having one of his arteries severed - they began to worry about making it to the children's benefit event on time.

Outside of the tent, a sobbing Anushka was already waiting for them with an armful of fresh clothes.

"Anushka!" exclaimed Cecilia as though she had found a small girl with a splinter in her finger. "Everything's fine-"

"Hurtings!" she spastic brunette draenei sobbed in Common. "Hurtings bad much!" She immediately began sputtering something in her own language that may very well have been incomprehensible to other draenei as well given her hysterical state.

Cecilia motioned for Khujand to take the clothes from the trembling woman as she pulled Anushka into a hug. It seemed that, for the umpteenth time, the spaz had inadvertently turned someone else's crisis into her own.

Khujand held the pile of folded clothing out in front of himself for a second. "Wait a minute...these are tha towels from tha inn. And these clothese ain't new..." His eyes darted from the clothes to the balling draenei. "Anushka, did ya break inta our-"

"Sssshhh!" shushed Cecilia with a finger to her lips. Anushka had calmed down as the night elf held her and rocked her back and forth like a giant horned child.

After some more coaxing, the trio made their way down to one of two bathhouses at Exarch's Refuge - one which mostly catered to local draenei (where genders were separate but on each side everyone bathed together) and the other where patrons paid extra for their own private shower. Cecilia and Anushka both went to the cheaper bathhouse for locals without issue, though Khujand's territorial culture took over and he demanded his own private room to bathe in, and they parted ways with their respective clothing and towels.

As was expected, there was a short wait at the private showers in the more upscale bathhouse, and Khujand sat on a marble ledge to wait his turn, clothes and towel folded in his lap. There were only two people ahead of him, though almost as soon as he sat down, the turn for the local orc at the front of the line came up and he hurried inside. The waiting area was literally just off on one side of the rows of private showers, and the rising steam from the ten-foot high partitions created an almost humid-subtropical climate that reminded the jungle troll of Gorgrond.

The exhausted looking draenei waiting in front of Khujand was the first to strike up a conversation as they waited. The draenei also happened to be a woman, which made him a bit uncomfortable sitting next to her alone while waiting to shower. She was also kind of pretty which made him really, really uncomfortable. But she also had a bad haircut which made things a little easier.

"Not into the whole communal bath thing either, huh?" she asked in Common.

Khujand raised an eyebrow suspiciously at first, though given that he was trying to improve his social skills and this was a person he didn't have to deal with regularly, it was as good an opportunity as any other. "Pshh, naw way," the jungle troll said dismissively. "I ain't down with that. I earn my money ta enjoy it, not ta hoard it forever. I can shell out a little for my own privacy."

The plainclothes but battle scarred draenei nodded approvingly. "Amen to that!"

There was an awkward pause, though the fact that bad haircut woman seemed just as awkward was heartening. Perhaps awkward silences aren't always because of me, Khujand thought to himself. Deciding to try another social interaction, he jumped right into a topic that interested him.

"Let me ask ya a question, if ya...ya don't mind, ya know." Khujand tried to sound casual, though his control over his tone of voice still wasn't as precise as that of normal people, and he felt it would sound a bit forced.

The unassuming draenei seemed not only unperturbed by the tone of voice but also undaunted by the question. "Shoot," she said as though the two of them were old pals.

"Whashyu think of all this interfactional cooperation?"

The draenei puffed her cheeks up with air as though she didn't know what to say. "That's a big topic," she started cautiously. "I mean, we're in the midst of an interfactional campaign, so one would think that such a concept would be assumed as a given now."

"One would think..."

"Right. Society is slow to change, unfortunately. Sometimes the prejudiced among us have the loudest voices."

Khujand's ears drooped, though the logic in the answer was comprehensible. "I suppose problems're inevitable."

The single draenei female looked thoughtful for a moment as she rested her elbows on her towel and the fresh clothing in her own lap. "You know what?" she asked absentmindedly as she stared off into space.

There was a pause where the woman simply didn't continue, which had the jungle troll staring in anticipation.

"Um...what?"

Staring at the wall for a second longer, she blinked and seemed pulled back into reality. "Oh, sorry," she apologized sincerely. "Eh, look. Every community has its problems. Building a more tolerant world is just a matter of shutting those nagging, extreme voices out."

Khujand stroked his scarlet beard while the draenei ruffled her hair. "So ya think it's gonna be easier now, with all tha cooperation?" the jungle troll asked the draenei.

"I really, truly hope that and many more forms of person-to-person connection become easier with all the cross-factional cooperation," she answered. Then she turned toward the jungle troll abruptly and began examining him. "Wait...I know you."

Ears perking up with curiosity, Khujand turned and half-expected to be faced with a pissed off Alliance prisoner-of-war he might have tortured during his time with the Warsong Outriders - the war crimes that got him sent on his own prison sentence in the first place.

"All trolls look alike, as they say," the Shadow Hunter murmured nervously in a a weak attempt at denial.

The draenei was undaunted but polite. "No, I'm sure of it..." Khujand was almost sweating bullets as she looked up at him, hints of recognition showing on the woman's face. "Were you at Tanaan?"

Images of the Assault on the Dark Portal flashed through Khujand's mind as he could almost hear the death groans of friend and foe alike as shells and firebombs exploded around him. Once he realized that this exarch recognized him as an ally, however, it was easy to calm down. "Yeah!" he beamed just a little too loudly. "Wait...taei wanni wanga, I remember regroupin' with ya after we set a bunshaya free at that old buildin' we barricaded!"

"Yes!" the Draenei beamed with a legitimate warmth. "We split up when we reached those steamships...there really is no way of knowing who survived and who didn't until you meet them." What was once tension immediately turned into relief that only former comrades in arms could understand, regardless of what banner they marched under.

Khujand felt a sudden joy he normally only experienced with old friends. "I already didn't think we'd make it past that arena where they sent tha hundred warriors after us," the jungle troll chuckled as the memories came back to him. "That was some serious shit, ya saved our asses with all those heals ya were throwin' out while swingin' ya hammer at tha same time."

"Oh, I do try my best," the draenei admitted with a hint of what seemed like bashfulness. "That spell you cast to shield us during the final push against the artillery, after we demolished the Dark Portal...it's called 'big bad voodoo,' right? Like what Rokhan and the other Shadow Hunters do to protect their allies?"

"Right, most of us don't understand exactly how it works...we just, commune with tha spirits of tha fallen, ya know? And they stand in tha way of our enemies and our allies knowin' that some time in tha past, they were protected at least once, too."

"Some people scoff at buffing and debuffing ones comrades, but having that support makes all the difference between a winning front line and a losing one," the draenei added as the they both became more engaged in the conversation than Khujand imagined either of them had been in a long time. "Not that clobbering a few Iron Horde soldiers by hand wasn't fun either..."

"Ya said it, sister!"

The two veterans jammered back and forth about the horror and unintentional hilarity they witnessed back in Tanaan for more than ten minutes, forgetting that they had been waiting in line at all. They laughed and grew serious and laughed again, the sort of sharing that two veterans who served together - no matter what races they were born with - would always be capable of. The two suddenly dear friends had just begun complaining about the tendency of Thrall and Khadgar to go on long, boring speeches when they'd done very little of the work when a bathhouse attendant bearing a striking resemblance to the former warchief walked up to them.

"Your shower is prepared, sir," he told the draenei in Orcish.

Nodding as she stood, the two friends shared their goodbyes and prepared to memorize each others' contact information. It wasn't every day two people who had survived such battles bumped into each other, and they'd be sure to keep in touch.

The draenei appeared contrite. "This is awkward, but...what was your name again?" she asked, a bit embarrassed.

"Khujand!" the jungle troll chortled, feeling absolutely thrilled that someone else fighting on the campaign could openly admit to feeling awkward. "I'm at tha Horde settlement at Thunder Pass. My ol' lady works with tha cartels shippin' mail through locations regardless of faction, so I won't be hard ta reach."

"A noble endeavor if there ever was one," the draenei said as she gathered her items and moved toward the showers. "I'm currently around Auchindoun, but I just took two day's leave. Our arms are open to anyone helping to fight the Iron Horde." She had already begun to walk to her shower stall when she realized she had forgotten something. "I'm Yrel, by the way," she said with a thumb to her chest.

Khujand sat down and waved as the exarch walked out of sight, alone as he waited for his own turn.

"Hmm...Eerul...wait, Yrel?!"

* * *

The entire central platform in the main area of Exarch's Refuge had been lined with stalls, with a small wooden stage set up toward the center for the live music. The band wasn't particularly loud and a great number of the songs were specifically for children - fitting, considering that the cover charge required would be donated to the local orphanage at the Refuge.

One of the more horrifying consequences of the Iron Horde's reign of terror was the large number of children left without parents or with handicapped parents unable to care for them properly. It was heartbreaking to see - almost every town on Draenor, even those established by Azerothians of the Alliance and Horde - was filled to the brim with refugees, a large portion of them children. The sheer amount of coinage minted by the capitol cities back on Azeroth was draining gold supplies though creating jobs in the mining industry back home. The money was mostly going to construction and logistics contracts for the war effort, but eventually it made it to the local population on Draenor. A massive expense, but a noble cause defending the people of two separate planets.

Though the even was well organized, there weren't quite enough chairs, and the ledges marking the outer circle of the platform were lined with sitting guests watching the band on the stage and the crowd of mostly children dancing nearby, a few scattered parents and caretakers functioning as chaperones while onlookers consumed non-alcoholic beverages.

The environment wasn't wild, but it was festive, fun and friendly.

Although Khujand's neck had healed more or less completely by then, Cecilia clutched his elbow and slowed him down as she insisted he walk carefully the whole way there. Anushka soon found Yaromira and Kiul, the draenei couple working for the same cartel as Cecilia that had led the mapping mission in Gorgrond where she met Khujand. Only recently leaving duty, they were still wearing their light brown postal workers' uniforms, though with their sleeves rolled up they still looked ready to relax.

Yaromira attempted to look for the now healed cut on Khujand's neck, giving him a minor scare when she almost inadvertently poked it with one of her fake fingernails while inspecting his throat. "Honestly, it has healed very well," she commented. "To be frank, I'm glad I wasn't there. It would have been stressful to see."

Cecilia laughed, though her long, feral eyebrows were arched in a sad smile. "You don't know the half of it," she replied as she clutched Khujand's arm a bit tighter and directed him to sit down on the stone ledge next to a saberon couple.

The male saberon noticed the necklace of sixteen animal teeth, talons and claws around Khujand's neck - ten thousand years of Cecilia's career as a huntress she had bestowed upon him. When Khujand saw him looking, he pointed to a fetish made of beads and decorated rat skulls hanging from the cat man's ear and gave a thumbs up.

"Looks good!" the jungle troll beamed in Orcish, garnering a confused yet not hostile look from the saberon. Seeming to get the point, the saberon pointed at the necklace and gave a furry thumbs up of his own.

Elizra and Tyron waved to Cecilia and Khujand from across the platform but preferred not to approach. The jungle troll deduced that the worgen couple preferred not to hang around when the saberon couple was sitting next to them, the eternal conflict between cats and dogs unfortunately hampering relations between the two races.

"Oh, I remember this song!" Kiul sighed wistfully as the six-person band began playing an upbeat tune with a goofy sort of sound. The children went wild as a few more adults joined them, dancing in pairs. "We used to dance to this song as youths on our own timeline's version of Draenor. The words are about children trying to wake their father early on a holiday morning." He turned to Yaromira, who clasped her hands together tightly in her lap and batted her eyelashes at him.

Kiul looked back to the night elf and the jungle troll sitting in front of them. "If you'll excuse us," he chortled as he took Yaromira by the hand and led her toward the growing crowd that suddenly had a dozen more children bouncing around to join it. The draenei couple met their worgen counterparts and joked briefly before joining in the somewhat stiff, formal dance that had the children laughing at the adults.

There were still people sitting on the ledges around the platform and in scattered chairs as they talked and joked, with droves more still milling about the hawkers' stalls just on the other side of the ledges. Just as the trumpeter on the stage blew his horn, Anushka and Irien popped up from the crowd across the platform and made their way toward the interracial couple.

Khujand turned to Cecilia, whispering into her ear while fixating on their approaching friends. "Cici?"

"Hmm?"

"Why didn't Irien stick around ta talk ta me at tha infirmary like everyone else did?" he asked with a measure of concern. The sharpshooter was not only co-owner of the duplex they were working to pay off back in Ratchet but also the best friend of them both.

Cecilia looked up to her fiance with a cheeky grin. She leaned in close as though she had a secret to tell. "Irien cried."

Khujand's eyes grew wide as he tried to wrap his head around Irien Rainsong, the most outspoken, brash elf he had ever met, crying over his throat injury. "No... he murmered incredulously. "Like, whined or whimpered?" he asked.

"Nope," Cecilia denied with a shake of her head. "Cried cried, as in, she was balling like Anushka because she worried your severed artery wouldn't heal. Irien shed tears for you like a big wuss." The both snickered at their best friend's expense and felt like some sort of power couple as they exchanged knowing looks.

"Took you long enough to get here!" exclaimed their target as she stood in front of them with her hands on her hips. "The weekend has passed by without you!"

The Shadow Hunter flashed a mischevious grin, though Irien didn't seem to realize her secret had been told. "So, Irien," he started nonchalantly. "I saw ya at ta infirmary taday."

A quick flash of anger flashed across the shorter of the two elves' face and she glared at Cecilia for a moment. "Yes, I remember that," she said with a flat tone.

"Ya didn't say much ta me," he said with a disappointed voice. "Why'dya pull Cici away ta tha corner and leave me by my lonesome?"

Irien knew what was going on when she saw Cecilia stifling a laugh. "I had something private to say! Something that was supposed to stay between me and Cici!" Irien's fists were already balled up just as she began blushing violet. "I don't have to listen to these wild allegations!"

Already sensing the 'conflictions,' Anushka stepped in. "Please not to talk about the healings," the spaz pleaded. "Let's all find our happy of the childs!" She tugged on the collar of Irien's long-sleeved, faded red everyday shirt she probably found at a thrift store and the shorter elf gladly stomped off to salvage her pride.

Once again left alone, Cecilia scooted a little closer to Khujand as they watched several of their friends dance among the children and a handful of other adults to the live music, an overall positive vibe wafting over the entire area as members of almost every race and faction imaginable shared food, drinks and laughs. Blook, despite his massive bulk that was likely a huge safety violation, began doing the cabbage patch in front of the stage, eliciting a roar of cheering from the half a dozen children all spinning around him.

Looking down to her, Khujand saw a faraway look in Cecilia's eyes as she smiled at Elizra and Yaromira both. As they each danced with their husbands, they appeared totally free, relaxed and truly happy. None of the four were particularly good dancers, but they didn't seem to care - they laughed as they pulled each other close, just like the other couples dancing amidst the crowd of children.

The guilt of his behavior yesterday returned to him as Khujand remembered how quickly his fiance's mood had changed when he pulled his hand away from hers. All around the platform, on the ledge and on chairs, were members of both factions. From the Alliance, there were archmages, paladins, dwarven nobility and a lot of high-ranking draenei. Blue-and-gold tabards were mostly off to one side, with the occasional native Draenorean and neutral faction member mixed in.

Mostly off to the other side was a mix of red-and-black as witch doctors, blood knights, two tauren chieftans, an animated obsidian statue and a lot of orc veterans chatted and laughed. There were members of neutral factions as well and a handful of open-minded gnomes, but otherwise there seemed to be an unconscious divide. The large amount of natives to Draenor - most of whom didn't know and didn't care of the factional differences on Azeroth - filled in the gaps everywhere.

When the wistfulness came to Cecilia's gaze, Khujand couldn't bear it any longer. He rose from the ledge without her even noticing and offered his hand.

"Come on, girl," he said in Darnassian with a sad smile. "We can't let our friends think they're tha only bad dancers out here."

She looked up to him in legitimate surprise, her eyes wide and her mouth dropped open as though she didn't know what to say. Her eyes moved to four of Khujand's fellow Darkspear trolls seated across from them. One of them was clearly a Shadow Hunter like him, and was already scowling contemptuously at one of his brethren extending his hand to a Kaldorei for a dance. Some other night elves were also peering at Cecilia judgmentally, though she was used to that.

She looked up at him again, a mixture of joy, flattery but also self-consciousness and disappointment on her face. "It's alright, Khujand," she apologized with her ears drooping lower. "I'm not upset anymore. We can still have fun watching." Though nobody else would have felt it, he sensed the hurt Cecilia was trying to mask in her voice.

"I want ta, Cici. Please. It doesn't matter who sees or doesn't see."

He reached forward a bit further with his hand, but only held it in front of hers; he wanted her to accept rather than be pulled. With his eyebrows arched innocently as he knelt down like he had at the inn, though he kept as playful a demeanor as he could in an attempt to help her loosen up.

Hesitating as she heard a snide comment from one of the tauren further away, Cecilia slipped her hand into his and rose up as he did, letting her wrist lie limp and daintily as she bowed her head and looked at the ground in front of her. Though she didn't speak, he knew her well enough to guess it could have been caused both by a coy appreciation of his effort and a lingering discomfort over how he might react if other members of the Horde became critical.

Guiding her over to the small sea of children dancing around the handful of other couples, Khujand turned and took her hands in his and Cecilia finally met his gaze. There was still apprehension but her expression softened as they pulled each other close.

"I don't give a damn about what anybody says about us," he whispered to her as he slid one hand on the small of her back. "And I swear, if I see any of my old prison buddies again, I'm gonna french ya right in front of them!" They both laughed at the suggestion and Cecilia grabbed his right hand in her left assertively like they did that first night in Gorgrond many months ago, once again taking the lead herself.

Cecilia leaned her head up against his neck, turning to put her lips closer to his ear. "Incorrigible," she whispered right back. Her eyes darted first to a Warsong Outrider looking at the couple with disgust from across a table someone had just set up for snacks on the platform itself, then up to Khujand who also glanced at the Outrider for a moment before ignoring the guy completely and leaning his cheek against her forehead.

The band played a slower tune now, much to the chagrin of the children but the enjoyment of the adults. Any tension that had been present previously dissipated as Khujand could feel every muscle in Cecilia's body relax as he pressed her against him again, a strange tingling feeling settling in on the top of his head as they pulled apart again to be able to see each other (and because there were children present).

Cecilia opened her mouth to speak before someone shorter ducked in between the two of them and pushed them apart.

"Irien!" Cecilia growled in frustration as their best friend decided to start dancing right in the middle of them. "We're trying to enjoy ourselves!"

"Third wheel for the win!" Irien tried to say in a voice similar to Cecilia's huskier tone but ended up making her sound like a buffoon, just like every time she tried to do that.

The shorter elf suddenly started chest popping rapidly in some dance she said was called 'krumping,' and the draenei, orc and arakkoa children around the three gigantic dancers began going wild. The band felt the change in atmosphere - the children still outnumbered the adults - and picked up the pace of the tune. Irien was still intent on pulling Khujand and Cecilia into some awkward three way dance only she was interested in when Anushka clopped over.

"Irien, the in-cuttings are so inappropriate!" the silk-clad, overdressed draenei urged in Common. "Dance for two of two, not three of three!"

That evil grin spread across Irien's face and Khujand and Cecilia shared a silent 'uh-oh' as they realized what was happening. Without warning, Irien grabbed Anushka and pulled her in the center of a ring of small children, pulling her into an embrace ten times more awkward.

"Irien, of what you doings!"

"Two of two, right?" Irien asked with a laugh as the children placed their hands on the backs of each others shoulders and started doing a people train around the night elf sharpshooter forcing Anushka to do the cha-cha with her.

Cecilia practically fell into Khujand with laughter, the two of them nearly stepping on a few more kids as they tried to contain themselves. She threw her arms around his neck to prop herself up, and he already had his hands on her waist as they fell into half-step with the music again.

She looked into his eyes as they slow danced despite the faster pace of the music. Two incredibly tall bad dancers standing out in a crowd of other bad dancers and rambunctious children swayed in front of a makeshift stage held by non-professional musicians. The noise of the patrons, diners and shoppers at the stalls just outside of the central circular platform was almost louder than the music, but the two of them only heard a certain drum beat coming from nowhere played by an absent friend they'd both need to visit soon.

Khujand pulled Cecilia in close again and rested his forehead down on hers. Though the glow from both of their eyes was dim, it burned brightly in the little room of privacy created by her arms as they wrapped around the back of his head and the leaned in to each other. An odd couple ignored the judgmental stares of others as they felt at peace, feeling each other live and breathe without thinking or analyzing at all.

"I love ya, girl," he murmured.

She nuzzled his nose with her own before answering. "I love you too."

 **A/N: and that's the fluffy yet violent story I wrote during the summer. Hope everybody enjoyed the shorty but goodie!**

 **For those interested, there is an interlude...a few ensemble pieces on Draenor are coming up next, including a double whammy of two stories posted at the same time: one from Irien's perspective called 'Pit of Sargeras' and one from the perspective of Yaromira and Kiul called 'Dream Eater.'**

 **When those finish, I'll finally post a story I'm a bit self conscious about: 'Be By My Side,' how Cecilia's sister Unelia met Johan.**

 **There are others immediately following - Escape From Ashran, the massive You Me & Us to name a few - but I won't inundate you with titles. If you choose to read on, awesome! If not, I hope you enjoyed this small piece here and I wish you all the best. :)**


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